The Rangers have played 21 games, so they've hit the quarter [REDACTED]. You'll see lots of other team and player analyses from more reputable sites and writers, and I suggest you read those. I wanted to come at this from a slightly different angle.

One of the fancystat debates that will never go away is how a player's results are impacted the other team's players. This is commonly referred to as Quality of Competition, and its been debated from pretty much the start of the BehindTheNet era. As more nuanced work on the issue has been done, we find that two things seem true: (1) Quality of Competition Matters... (2) ... but in larger samples its effect tends to be minimized.

If there is a key fact to keep in mind, it's that players tend to have *worse* results against *better* players (when better and worse are determined by shot attempt differential). This seems totally logical, but the following chart from the above-linked HockeyGraphs article is a good visual depiction.

coutersy of HockeyGraphs (click on picture for link)

My goal here isn't to revisit the worth of QoC. I'm not that smart. Recently, FotB @petbugs13 (who also wrote that HockeyGraphs article above) posted an interesting visual look at how players are used ("matched") against their competition, and how they perform against that competition. PB was nice enough to share the data with me, and I thought it would be a different way to look at the Rangers' players' first quarter usage and results.

First, let's look at the "key" PB provided - you'll want to keep this picture handy so you can review it when looking at the rest of this post.

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PB annotated this really well, but some high points: The two charts on the left will show a player's matchups against "high TOI" opponents (the top left), and against "high quality" opponents (the bottom left). "Quality" in the latter case is determined by an opponent's Corsi (or shot attempt) differential.

The two charts in the middle will show the player's performance against those two categories of opponents. The chart on the far right will show how a player performs against the opponents he is matched up against, and also those opponents he is not matched up against.

Some other definitions, straight from PB:

Expected TOI = (TOI with the opponent + TOI away from opponent) x opponent's TOI%. So if you play 20 5v5 minutes against my team, and I typically play 25% of my team's 5v5 TOI, you should expect to play 5 mins against me.

Expected CD60 is just the opponent's average CD60 against everyone they've played.

When looking at the results, in general, we want to see a player producing positive results on the y-axis. In those cases, the player is performing better than we would expect against that opponent or that match-up. To simplify, a value above "0" doesn't necessarily mean the player is producing "positive" numerical counts (i.e 1, 2, 3...), but performing better counts than expected (i.e a -1 when the expected is a -3).

So let's see the NYR roster's result to this point in 2017. We'll go in jersey number order, for no particular reason, and look at the forwards first. All data is 5v5, score and venue adjusted from NaturalStatTrick. Because there's so much material here, I've prepared summary charts, and provided my main takeaways here, rather than make you scroll through a lot of detail.

Looking at how the NYR forwards have matched up against opposition forwards, here are some interesting things:

Most coaches seem equate the other teams "better" players as the ones who get the most TOI. So it is not surprising to see more matching/sheltering based on the oppoonents TOI, as opposed to their Corsi differential.

So far, only Hayes, Nash and Zibanejad have shown a "strong" tendency to be matched against the better opposition forwards. [Some players, like Kreider, show a very slight matching, but if it was close to even I erred on the side of treating it as neutral]. All three of those have good positive results too (though Hayes is slightly underperforming against his matchups).

Grabner, Desharnais, and Nieves have been the most sheltered. Grabner and Desharnais have terrible results, even with that sheltering. Nieves, on the other hand, has positive performance across the board. Maybe it is time to give Nieves some of Desharnais' ice time.

Other positive performers: Kreider, Zuccarello and Buchnevich. [Buchnevich and Zibanejad have the best results on the team, basically]

Other underperformers: Fast, Vesey, and Miller-ish.

Looking at how the NYR forwards have matched up against opposition defensemen, here are some interesting things:

The ZBK line shows up as the main matching line against opposing defensemen. I assume matchups of defensemen against forwards are more driven by the defensive coach. If I'm right, that means this result is because the other team is getting its better defensemen on against the ZBK line, which makes sense. [Note that Nash is the only other "matched" forward].

Almost no forward is matched against the other team defensemen baed on the Corsi differential of those defensemen. So most of the guys are playing against both "better" and "worse" shot differential defensemen relatively equally.

The sheltered guys are basically the bottom six guys - Miller, Fast, Vesey, Carey, Grabner. [Again this is not an exact measurement - some guys could straddle the line between categories and I'm just making quick judgments].

Performance vs Matchups: Relatively neutral - again hovering mainly around zero. A slight negative performance against the opposition forwards he is not matched up against, and a basically neutral performance against the opposition forwards he is not matching.

Miller Summary: Considering Miller's generally poor Corsi results, he's not been as bad as we might have expected against opposition forwards.

Performance vs Matchups: Relatively neutral - again hovering mainly around zero but reversed of his results against forwards. A slight negative performance against the opposition forwards he is not matched up against, and a neutral performance against the opposition forwards he is matching.

Miller Summary: Basically neutral.

Kevin Hayes vs Opposition Forwards

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Matchups: Hayes is matching up against higher TOI forwards, but less obviously against "better" Corsi forwards.

Performance vs Comp (Opponent's CD): This is more confusing - Hayes has worse than expected results against "worse" quality forwards, but trends to perform better than expected against "higher" quality forwards.

Performance vs Matchups: Hayes shows generally positive results against the opposition forwards he is not matched up against, and neutral-to-poor performance against the opposition forwards he is matching.

Hayes Summary: Hayes' defensive focus is clear - he's been matched as hard as any NYR forward so far. Considering that usage, his results against opposition forwards has been pretty good.

Performance vs Comp (Opponent's TOI): Hayes has performed generally positively against all defensemen.

Performance vs Comp (Opponent's CD): Basically neutral, hovering around zero whether against "worse" defensemen or "better" defensemen. But with a slight trend toward performing better against "better" defensemen - which is not the league norm.

Performance vs Matchups: Hayes has performed better against the defensemen he's not matching, but negatively against the opposition defensemen he is matching.

Hayes Summary: Hayes not matching as hard against opposition defensemen, but his results have also been more up and down.

Performance vs Matchups: Nash has generally outperformed his expected results against his non-matchup opposition forwards, and only slightly negatively performed against his matchups.

Nash Summary: Considering how he's been used to match high TOI forwards, I think these are pretty good results overall.

Rick Nash vs Opposition Defensemen

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Matchups: Nash has not been matched as strongly against high TOI defensemen as he was against high TOI forwards.

Performance vs Comp (Opponent's TOI): Nash has held his own against opposition defensemen, with strong positive results against lower TOI defensemen.

Performance vs Comp (Opponent's CD): Like his recent linemates Hayes and Zuccarello, Nash has generally positive results against "better" quality defensemen, and worse results against "worse" quality defensemen. Not sure I have a reason for that.

Performance vs Matchups: Nash has generally outperformed his expected results against the opposition defensemen he's avoiding, but has also generally negatively performed against his matchups.

Nash Summary: While not as strong as his results against opposition forwards, there has still been a lot of positive results from Nash.

Pavel Buchnevich vs Opposition Forwards

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Matchups: Those are some flat lines, dead center. Buchnevich has not been matched much.

Performance vs Comp (Opponent's TOI): Very positive results against all opposition forwards, even with the downward trend against the high TOI forwards.

Performance vs Matchups: Zibanejad has generally outperformed his expected results against the opposition forwards he's avoided, though his trendline slope is more pronounced than anyone else (so he's had more variation between his "good" results and his "bad" results).

Zibanejad Summary: Zibanejad has been used to match higher TOI forwards, and has some of the best results of the NYR forwards.

Mika Zibanejad vs Opposition Defensemen

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Matchups: Zibanejad has matched more strongly against high TOI defensemen.

Performance vs Matchups: Zibanejad has generally underperformed his expected results against his avoided opposition defensemen, and generally outperformed his expected results against his opposition defensemen matchups.

Zibanejad Summary: While not as pronounced as his results against forwards, Zibanejad still has generally at least broken even against opposition defensemen.

So what difference does it make?

I would not read too much into these results. This is just a different way to look at how NYR skaters are used against their opponents, and how they've faired so far. The summary charts toward the top show the big picture - the KZB line good, Hayes, Nash, Zuccarello and Nieves decent, and the rest not so good. Tomorrow, I'll put up these same looks for the NYR defensemen. [Teaser: one of the guys is a "Kampfer Fire"].